FSPort for the 21st Century: Faster. Harder. Smarter (OPEN BETA) A new way to play the classic FSPort Media VPs campaign!
Hi there, welcome to the BETA release thread of my first properly released mod - be gentle, it’s my first time 😜
So, what is FSPort ReCharged, and what does it do differently from vanilla FSPort?FSPR is a comprehensive edit of FSPort’s weapons, ships and AI tables, combined with new weapons and a little light FREDing of the vanilla missions and a new gameplay mechanic – deployable Rally Points.
Compared to vanilla FSPort, it is faster and more dynamic, with enemies that are significantly more challenging.
What has changed?The short answer is ‘A lot’.
Move like a Starfury with GXYZ flight mechanics.
Face enemies with AI that makes even Fury AI look tame.
Brutal knife-fight dogfights with rapid-fire primaries and enhanced secondaries.
Ineffective blob turrets replaced with devastating CIWS / PDC screens.
Capital-on-capital ship combat with swarm torpedoes and main artillery exchanges.
Tactical pause via the slowcomms script.
Wingman gauge script so you can tell who is in a fighter and who is in a bomber.
Manage your wing mates with deployable Rally Points.
The longer answer can be found in the change notes:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZD617b_vHio0Qp13vz4SmbWRrbufZq70/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101417727212119794448&rtpof=true&sd=trueGame Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hcK2opCJRHsHWTDXYM-zm-vGl70xktpY/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101417727212119794448&rtpof=true&sd=trueRally Points Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GRFOJtbPL800-sxK3a8rQjuc4f67PQg/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=101417727212119794448&rtpof=true&sd=trueGameplay and features demonstration videoShould be ready by next Sunday
FAQsWhy the ‘Faster, Harder, Smarter’ strapline?Because compared to vanilla FSPort MVPs it is faster, it is harder, and so to survive you will need to fight smarter.
Why have you created this?The HLP community has made tremendous strides in improving the graphics, sounds, cutscenes and quality-of-life features of the original FS1 via FSPort and its Media VPs. But one thing that has remained the same is the gameplay. This is fine for a ‘vanilla with better eye-candy’ experience - which is what most people want it seems, and should be preserved as such.
But I was craving a different gameplay experience - after all, things have moved on a lot since 1998. So, I decided to do what I always do in situations where I want something that hasn’t been done yet - do it myself. (Quite possibly with Blackjack and Hookers as paid for DLC 😁)
Looking at the various AI, Ship and weapon’s tables - and their associated wikis - I was delighted to see that most of what I wanted to change - and a whole lot more - was already possible. For some this was possible since retail (I think) whilst for others it was the result of the coding geniuses at HLP who added these features via successive FSO build updates. It appears that most modders either didn’t know about them (please correct me if I’m wrong) or chose not to use them, which is entirely their prerogative of course.
I was curious to see how far vanilla FS gameplay could be tweaked by simply editing tables and activating these seldom-used features. So, I ‘experimented’ with them (read ‘arsing around to see what happens whilst trying not to break things’) when I had some free time, and FSPort: ReCharged (Open Beta) is the result, which I’m sharing with you all now.
Secondly, I wanted the gameplay to become less about dogfighting skills and more about tactics - fighting smarter, not harder, as you would in an RTS such as Homeworld. I was able to achieve this to an extent (trying to ‘Alpha One’ everything will just get you killed on any difficulty beyond Easy) but FSO limitations prevented some ideas or made them less effective (for example the AI’s rather stupid priority regarding support ship rearm and repair, and the fact you can’t order the repair ship to repair a specific fighter. I have raised this as a git hub request, so that may change in the future.)
Thirdly, I wanted to make combat scary again, especially so against the Shivans. In many campaigns, the Shivans are not much of a threat one-on-one and are only a credible threat when they have you outnumbered. The Lucifer threat was mostly due to its plot armour.
Bem Cavalgar (which you have probably heard me praising for a while now) changed this, simply by changing the AI and altering a few ship and weapon stats. As a result, the Shivans were truly terrifying in that mod, something I appreciated greatly. (It’s the only campaign I have played to date where I have truly felt like the underdog, and it is the only campaign that truly ‘sold’ the idea of the Shivans as an unstoppable, unknown-able, eldritch cosmic horror by gameplay alone.) So, I decided to replicate this, and then dial it up to 11. The Shivans outclass their Terran and Vasudan counterparts in every way, therefore effective teamwork and tactics are the only way to survive.
Why create this instead of a new story-based campaign?That will come later, once I have fully learnt how to FRED, use Sexpes etc. (or recruit a team who is already proficient in these - if interested please PM me).
I already have a multi-act post-Capella campaign (Causality) in its design stages, but I need to bring my Fredding skills up to the requisite level to make it. In the meantime, I can do this.
FSPR is also a learning experience and an experiment, since Causality will likely use many of these mechanics too.
What were your main inspirations for this?• Bem Cavalgar (AI)
• War Machine (the idea of taking an existing campaign and ‘ReCharging’ it)
• The Babylon Project - The Babylon 5 Total Conversion (GXYZ movement)
• FSBlue (Ballistic weapons with support ship rearm, and the idea of taking the crappy ‘knockabout’ primary and turning it into something useful)
• Exile (Rapid fire weapons from the start, support ship hull repair)
• Memories of the Great War (Shivan VLS/HLS)
• Real Life - CWIS and C-RAM systems, interceptor anti-missiles.
Why the 20-25mps speed boost?Because I always felt vanilla FS speeds frustratingly sluggish. This small change makes a big difference in game ‘feel’, without greatly changing the game.
Does FSPR change the story, add missions etc?No. Not yet anyway. Those will come later with the full release. There might be scope for making minor changes in the meantime if that’s what the community wants.
Why ‘Public Beta’?To get feedback from the player base, which can be used to further refine it in future updates. This may also inform some of the design choices I use in Causality later on.
What can we expect from the full-non-beta release?• Significant upgrading of several missions, using the Co-op FSPort’s missions as a base. So more intense dogfights, more transports as ersatz gunboats, more capital ship on capital ship combat. (Since we are no longer bound by 1998 PC hardware limitations let’s go large.)
• New training mission(s) to show the player how all the new gameplay mechanics work
• Checkpoints where needed (First Strike once the Taranis is disabled for example - that mission is a slog.)
• Markbox script, and possibly other small QoL improvements such as BP fonts, enhanced HUD and radar icons etc.
• New weapons – Terran capital ship VLS torpedoes, semi-guided rockets, Hyper Velocity Anti-Missiles, Shivan Chain Gun etc.
• Voice acting for the newly added command briefing, briefing, in mission text.
• Fiction viewer entries
• Updated tech room descriptions
• Out-of-the-box compatibility with TrackIR and possibly VR
• Compatibility with the superb cockpit / ship interiors project – once the FS1 era Terran fighters have been modelled.
• Possible integration with the SCPUI
• More eye-candy - partly from adding in more effects from other campaigns, partly from the upcoming update of the FSPort MVPs.
• Standalone extra missions that fill some of the gaps in the FS1 story - such as how the HoL got shields so early on. (If this has been done already please let me know - there are so many missions, mission packs and the like that I haven’t played them all - yet 😁)
• Possible SOC loop(s) that answer some of the other unanswered questions - how did Terran sensors become able to scan and track Shivan craft, how did we convert the Avenger to be more effective against shields when we had no shields of our own to test them against, how did we capture that freighter that appears in the Hall Fight cinematic?
• Ability to order support ship to repair and rearm specific wing mates (*if this possible - a request for this has already been raised on GitHub.)
What are your next projects?1 - FSPort-ReCharged Lite. Simple ‘plug and play’ file pack that can be used with other FSPort campaigns, such as Shrouding the Light, Awakenings etc. to get a ‘ReCharged -Lite’ experience. Full details to follow.
2 - FS2 / FSBlue ReCharged, and FS2 ReCharged - Lite. Basically the same things but with FS2.
3 – Updating Reunion 2.0 to 2.5
4 – Causality, its prequel and its sequel. (So, about six acts in total)
Do you have a Discord for all these?Yes, all are welcome – the invite link is here
https://discord.gg/PX4X3MsxmFHope you all enjoy it. Player feedback is definitely welcome 👍
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FreeSpace Port ReCharged V0.0.9 release notes.
Hi all. V 0.0.9 is quite a large update with several significant changes and Quality of Life features.
First up, I have added Lafiel’s superb HUD icons script, so enemies will be highlighted. More importantly, bombs and VLS torpedos will be highlighted too, which makes it easier to tell which enemy secondaries need intercepting ASAP.
Secondly, I have added trails to the the anti-capital blob turrets (Vasudan and Terran Huge Turrets, the Shivan MegaFunk and Burst Turrets) as a visual shorthand. So if you see a blob with a trail, you will know which turret to defang.
Thirdly I have changed the font to the one BP uses as it is easier to read.
Shivan fighter and bomber primaries have been given a buff so they all slightly out-perform their Terran and Vasudan counterparts. This is to match the briefing room cutscene which says that “…the Shivan’s weapons are more powerful than anything in the GTA or PVN arsenals.” This may have increased the games difficulty a little but I haven’t had a chance to properly play-test it yet, so feedback is welcome.
I have reduced the power of the Terran MegaFunk turrets a bit, because the Orion’s triple barrel salvo mode turrets were killing enemy cap ships too quickly.
The Lilith’s VLS swarm torpedos now fire swarms if five (it was three) because three were too easily intercepted by capships PDCs.
The Demon’s VLS swarm torpedoes are now firing larger swarms of unknown mega bombs because the smaller swarms were too easily intercepted by their target’s PDC screens, and to make a Demon more of a threat to an Orion (the glorious old gun brick was kicking a demon’s ass too quickly 😎)
New weapons have been added too (they are tabled) but I haven’t had a chance to add them to any missions yet - this will be done for the next update.
The flail has been returned to its vanilla incarnation. A new kinetic weapon - the Browning (see what I did there?) has been created as the Maxim’s ancestor. It will be added to missions in the next update.
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